DAVID CAMERON has demanded more international co-operation on corporate tax avoidance but trade unions estimate that £25billion is lost a year from tax avoidance in the UK alone.

HAVING stuck two fingers up at Europe in his referendum speech on Wednesday, David Cameron had the gall to turn up in Davos to demand more international co-operation on corporate tax avoidance.

He ought to start at home, as the TUC reminded him yesterday.

Trade unions estimate that £25billion is lost a year from tax avoidance in the UK – £13billion by individuals and £12billion from the 700 largest corporations.

Another £8billion is lost to public funds from tax planning by the wealthiest people in the UK, those earning over £100,000, who use all the legal loopholes and sharp accountancy there is to buy to avoid paying their share.

If Cameron concentrated his rudderless government on raking in some of these missing billions instead of making an impossible demand for all national tax regimes to line up like skittles, he might be taken seriously as a statesman.

This is the man who runs a Downing Street operation so slack that his own policy guru Steve Hilton admitted recently that they find out about government announcements via the radio and ­newspapers every morning.

What a picture – a PM so inept that he tunes into the BBC to find out what his government are doing.

Voters can be forgiven for thinking the country is being run by an amateur, with a part-time chancellor who plots political games instead of economic recovery, and a Lib Dem deputy PM who knocks off early on a Friday and tells his staff not to bother him with too much reading.

Holding high office is an immense ­privilege – which comes with the burden of being a full-time, 24/7 operation.

But this crowd haven’t known a hard day’s work in their lives, which, of course, is one of the reasons why Cameron so often appears so clueless.

If he really wants to clamp down on tax avoidance, he should roll up his sleeves, start governing and tell his ministers to prosecute it with the same vigour as benefit fraud.

Put people first

On this page yesterday we warned that the EU membership ­referendum would prove a ­distraction from the issues that really matter to Scots.

And so it has proved already. First ­Minister’s Questions yesterday was duly dominated by this arcane debate about Europe which is largely irrelevant to the lives of most people.

And, inevitably, the other referendum – on Scottish independence – also loomed large over the exhanges.

There was a very brief discussion on the health crisis enveloping Scotland but that largely seemed like an afterthought.

Meanwhile, people across the country languished on dole queues, struggled to heat their houses, worried desperately about their future and watched loved ones languish on trolleys in hospital corridors.